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Cinema arrived in
China from the West in 1896, one year after the
Lumière brothers showed their films in a café
in Paris on 28 December 1895, a date generally considered as
the beginning of cinema in the world. From 1905 on, with a
constant influx of foreign films, China developed its own
film industry, merging Western technological invention with
rich resources from Chinese literary and performing
traditions. At the time when the first film was exhibited to
a Chinese audience in Shanghai on 11 August 1896,
traditional Chinese performing arts were the major forms of
audio-visual entertainment in cities and the
countryside.[1]
These performing arts included Beijing opera, various
regional operas, and different forms of musical
storytelling. Chinese people call all performances xi
(literally drama, play or show). When foreign films
first appeared in big cities in China, they were referred to
as yingxi (shadow drama, shadow play, or shadow
show). Since its very beginning, film, as a new form of
entertainment in China, has been intertwined with "drama,"
"play" or "show". Thus arose the theory of yingxi,
which had accustomed generations of filmmakers, critics and
audiences, right up to the 1980s, to apply concepts of drama
and theatre, rather than cinematic principles, to the
analysis of films. At several turning points in the
development of the Chinese film industry, traditional
Chinese theatre remained closely associated with the making
of films, and this interaction has never stopped. At the
same time, cinematic modes and techniques have, in turn,
played a major role, for better or worse, in effecting the
transformation of traditional forms of Chinese
theatre. [1]
Different scholars have named different people as the first
person to screen films in China. But all agree on the date
of 11 August 1896 based on advertisements in Shen bao
(Shanghai newspaper) 10 and 14 August 1896,
quoted by Cheng Jihua, Zhongguo dianying fazhan shi
vol. 1, (A history of the development of Chinese
cinema) (Beijing: Zhongguo Dianying Chuban She, 1963),
8. For different accounts see Jay Leyda, Dianying: an
account of films and the film audience in China
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972), 1; Zhiwei Xiao,
"Chinese cinema" in Yingjin Zhang and Zhiwei Xiao, eds.,
Encyclopedia of Chinese film (New York: Routledge,
1998), 4; Zhen Zhang, "Teahouse, shadowplay, bricolage:
'Laborer's love' and the question of early Chinese cinema,"
in Yingjin Zhang, ed., Cinema and urban culture in
Shanghai, 1922-1943 (Stanford, California: Stanford
University Press, 1999), 32. The above
statements do not imply that Chinese films were not
susceptible to foreign influences. Being an imported form,
cinema in China has been influenced by foreign films,
particularly Hollywood films (in the 1920s-1940s) and
Russian films (in the 1950s-1960s), which is not the focus
of this paper.[2]
It should be also noted that Chinese audiences constantly
exposed to Western films before the early1950s were mainly
young and middle-aged intellectuals and white-collar
professionals in coastal cities while audiences with lower
education and ordinary workers and farmers in cities and
rural areas preferred domestic films.[3]
This paper particularly examines a subject neglected or less
studied - the mutual influences between the cinema, a
Western medium, and the indigenous performing arts of China,
throughout the twentieth century. There are four areas
covered in this study: 1. cinematic representations of
traditional theatre; 2. theatre and its performers as
subject matter for fictional films; 3. use of theatrical
music and songs as narrative or musical motifs in
non-theatrical films; and 4. influences of cinematic modes
upon traditional theatre. The focus of this article is on
the mainland films, with only brief mention of the films of
Taiwan and Hong Kong. [2]
For Hollywood influences, see Leo Ou-fan Lee, "The urban
milieu of Shanghai cinema, 1930-1940: some explorations of
film audience, film culture, and narrative conventions," in
Yingjin Zhang, 1999, 74-96; Marie Cambon, "The dream palaces
of Shanghai - American films in China's largest metropolis
prior to 1949," Asian cinema 7, no.2 (Winter 1995):
34-45; and Wang Zhaoguang, "Minguo nianjian Meiguo dianying
zai hua shichang yanjiu" ("A study of American films in the
Chinese market during the Republican years"), Dianying
yishu (Film art), 1 (1998): 57-64. [3]
Wang Zhaoguang, 63. I will first
survey the chronological development of Chinese films to see
the place of traditional theatre at different stages in that
history, including the shift of silent films from
documentaries to narratives, the period from short features
to long features, the beginning of sound films, the
beginning of color films, and the transition from the screen
to television. This survey will hopefully demonstrate that
traditional theatre was an effective vehicle for the
technological development of Chinese cinema, served as a
cultural base for films that aimed to reach the largest
possible audiences, and remained a national symbol for the
spread of audio-visual popular culture. At the turn of
the twentieth century, foreign films screened in China were
mainly short documentaries of current events, human
activities, outlandish places and exotic behaviours around
the world. Foreign filmmakers also made documentaries of
Chinese life and social habits.[4]
To Chinese people who were exposed to these films, the
essence of the cinema seemed to be the recording of various
human shows. After these films had, for nine years, been
shown to Chinese audiences in big cities such as Shanghai,
Beijing and Hong Kong, Fengtai Photography Shop in Beijing
experimented with making the first Chinese film in 1905.
Imitating the foreign films, Fengtai Photography Shop used
the motion picture camera to "record". Unlike most foreign
films focusing on contemporary activities, its first film
was a cinematic recording of a Beijing opera performance.
Fengtai Photography Shop invited Tan Xinpei, the most famous
Beijing opera performer at the time, to present three
exciting episodes from the opera Dingjun mountain
(Dingjun shan). A camera was placed in front of the
actor, and remained static as it recorded Tan's marvellous
performance.[5] [4]
Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, Zhongguo wusheng dianying shi
(A history of Chinese silent film) (Beijing: Zhongguo
Dianying Chuban She, 1996), 6. [5]
Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 15. The choice of a
Beijing opera performance, rather than other human
activities, as the subject matter of the first film ever
made in China was culturally determined by the fact that
Beijing opera was extremely popular and influential
nationwide.[6]
Another contributing factor was the background of Ren
Qingtai, the owner of the photography
shop.[7]
He was born in 1850, and in his youth went to Japan with his
elder brother and learned the skills of picture-taking at a
photo shop. After he returned to China, he set up his own
shop in Beijing in 1892, later developing this into a studio
with more than ten technicians and apprentices. As his photo
business prospered, he engaged in other lines of business,
including setting up a theatre both for live Beijing opera
performances and for displaying photos he had taken of
well-known actors who had become his
friends.[8]
One of his technicians, Liu Zhonglun, filmed the first film
Dingjun mountain. It was in this theatre that the
film was screened,[9]
and "proved a huge success."[10] After the success
of Dingjun mountain, Fengtai Photography Shop made
another film of Tan Xinpei's performance in Changban
slope (Changban po 1905). Later, other Beijing
opera stars joined in the making of opera films: Yu Jusheng
and Zhu Wenying in Green rock mountain (Qingshi
shan 1906); Yu Jusheng in Yanyang tower
(Yanyang lou 1906); Yu Zhenting in White water
bay (Baishui tan 1906 or 1907) and The
golden-coin leopard (Jinqian bao 1906 or 1907);
Xu Deyi in Subduing General Guan Sheng (Shou Guan
Sheng 1906 or 1907); Xiao Magu in A mother's revenge
by killing her own son (Sha zi bao 1908) and
Spinning cotton (Fang mianhua
1908).[11]
In 1909, a fire destroyed Fengtai Photography
Shop.[12]
Although its film venture then came to an end, Fengtai's
pioneering effort was historically important. "The fact that
these earliest films attempted to integrate the new Western
medium with traditional Chinese theatre says much about the
terms on which film was adopted by pioneering Chinese
filmmakers."[13]
Using the foreign to serve the Chinese was one of the
concerns of the pioneers. Beijing opera was a composite art
form, with two major components - conventionalised singing
and stylistic acting. Since early films were all silent, the
pioneers focused on filming performances with more acting
than singing. Most of these films contained only one or more
scenes or episodes from the original plays, with the static
camera filming the actor(s) performing in front of it. These
films looked primitive and simple, but they started the
tradition of integrating the new Western medium with
traditional Chinese theatre - a tradition that was to last
for a century. [6]
Beijing opera grew from the competitions of various regional
operas in Beijing in the first fifty years of the
19th century. In the next half of the century, it
matured and spread to most areas in China. It enjoyed its
period of nationwide popularity in the first thirty years or
so of the 20th century. See the first two volumes
of Ma Shaobo, et. al., eds., Zhongguo jingju shi
(A history of China's Beijing opera) (Beijing:
Zhongguo Xiju Chuban She, 1999). [7]
Various historical accounts of the Chinese film industry do
not have an agreed name for the owner of Fengtai Photography
Shop. There are at least three different names for him: Ren
Qingtai, Ren Jingfeng and Ren Fengtai. [8]
Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 14. [9]
Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 15. [10]
Yingjin Zhang and Zhiwei Xiao, 167. [11]
Yu Ji, "Youguan mengyaqi Zhongguo dianying de jige wenti"
("On a few issues of early Chinese films"), Dianying
yishu (Film art), 4 (1998): 88. [12]
Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 15-16. [13]
Zhiwei Xiao, "Chinese cinema," in Yingjin Zhang and Zhiwei
Xiao, 5. Besides these
filmed performances, there were other experimental films,
mainly documentaries made in the 1910s by newly established
film companies in Shanghai, which immediately became the
heartland of the Chinese cinema. Recording and
representation were characteristic of China's earlier films.
It was not until 1913 that China had its first two short
narrative features: The difficult couple (Nanfu
nanqi, Asia Film Company) and Zhuang Zi tests his
wife (Zhuang Zi shi qi, Huamei
Films).[14]
The former was directed by Zhang Shichuan and Zheng
Zhengqiu, two of the leading figures in Chinese cinema. Both
were well connected in theatre circles in Shanghai. Zhang
later recalled: "Because it was to shoot a shadow-'play,'
naturally we thought of old 'theatre.' My friend Zheng
Zhengqiu centered all his interest on drama at the time. He
was in and out of theatres everyday. . .getting along very
well with the contemporary actors such as Xia Yueshan, Xia
Yueren, Pan Yueqiao, Mao Yunke, and Zhou
Fengwen."[15]
Naturally, their familiarity with old theatre shaped,
consciously or subconsciously, their concept of feature
films. Zhuang Zi tests his wife was an adaptation
from one episode of the Cantonese opera Zhuang Zi's dream
of butterfly (Zhuang Zhou hudie meng). Comparing
these two films, one finds that the latter was more
narrative than the former because its content built on the
complexity of the conflict between Zhuang Zi, the great
Taoist sage, and his wife - a dramatic tension that had been
highly developed in the Cantonese opera. While the filming
method in The difficult couple was still static,
special techniques were employed in Zhuang Zi tests his
wife to make Zhuang Zi's pretended ghost flicker around.
"The use of such a new method indicated that Chinese films
began to develop from documentaries to
narratives."[16]
These two films marked an important transition in the
function of the camera from documentation to narration, and
the second milestone in the history of Chinese
film. [14]
Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 45. [15]
Quoted from Tan Chunfa, "Changqi bei wudu bei lengluo de
yiye - zaoqi de Zhongguo dianying" ("Early Chinese films: a
historical page misread and ignored for a long time"),
Dangdai dianying (Contemporary cinema), 2
(1995): 13. [16]
Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 49. In the remaining
years of the decade, more short features were made, mostly
films of comic content with exaggerated gestures. Some of
them were based upon contemporary life; some were influenced
by French and American comedies; others were either inspired
by or adapted from traditional Chinese theatre, folk tales,
popular novels, or the so-called "civilised" plays
(wenming xi). The latter was a new theatrical genre,
modelled upon Western plays, and later developed into
huaju (spoken drama). A group of young intellectuals
and artists started this tradition in Shanghai after they
returned from Japan where they had their first encounter
with Western plays. As a reaction to the Beijing opera and
other age-old regional operas, these young artists aimed to
create social problem plays to educate Chinese people. Some
of the more successful were later adapted into short feature
films. Interestingly enough, though civilised plays were
started as a reaction to traditional Chinese theatre, some
prominent Beijing opera actors in Shanghai were also
actively involved in their performance, and many huaju
artists were also filmmakers. The acting style of
Chinese films had also been significantly influenced by the
style of huaju, which deserves an independent
study. Here, I want to mention wenmingxi only from
the perspective of the interactions between film and
traditional theatre. A perfect example is the film
Wronged ghosts in the opium den (Hei ji yuan
hun). It was originally a Beijing opera adapted from Wu
Yanren's fiction of the same title (1907) about the collapse
of a well-to-do family due to opium
addiction.[17]
After its performances at the New Theatre (Xin
Wutai), it was adapted as a "civilised" play with the
same title. With huge success, it was performed for several
years in theatres, big and small, in Shanghai and other
areas.[18]
In 1916, it was filmed as a short feature of four
reels.[19]
More short features made during this period fit into this
paradigm in terms of their relations with both traditional
operas and "civilised" plays. [17]
Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 58. [18]
Cheng Bugao, Yingtan yijiu (Reflections on the
past events of the silver screen) (Beijing: Zhongguo
Dianying Chuban She, 1983), 101; 105. [19]
Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 27. As the filmmakers
were experimenting with making short narrative features in
the 1910s, they were also exploring new ways to integrate
film with traditional theatre, such as the two films made by
the film department of the Commercial Press in 1920. These
were Chunxiang disturbs the study (Chunxiang nao
xue) and Celestial maiden spreads flowers
(Tiannü san hua), both filmed performances by
the greatest female-role actor Mei Lanfang, whose later
performance tours in America in 1930 and in Moscow in 1935
exerted great influence upon Western drama in the twentieth
century. There were some major differences between earlier
filmed performances and the films of Mei's performances.
Instead of just recording, the films of Mei's performance
used realistic stage sets, and in Chunxiang disturbs the
study, the scene where Chunxiang plays in the garden was
shot in a real private garden. In this film, long and medium
shots were used, with a close-up shot showing Chunxiang's
face first covered by a fan, later emerging as the fan
gradually moved away from it, and finally with a mischievous
smile.[20]
In Celestial maiden spreads flowers, filmed images of
clouds were overprinted onto the scene where the actor as
the fairy maiden is gracefully dancing with long ribbons,
thus creating an illusion of the celestial maiden descending
from heaven.[21]
It was the first time that Chinese filmmakers tried to use
cinematic techniques to interpret or "realise" the beauty of
traditional theatrical acting. But at the same time, it
subconsciously violated some stylised theatrical
conventions, which I will comment on later. [20]
Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 65. [21]
Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 65. Around 1920 and
1921, more film studios were established, resulting in the
first three long features: Yan Ruisheng (1921,
Chinese Film Research Society), Sea oath (Hai shi
1921, Shanghai Film Company), and Beauties and
skeletons (Hongfen kulou 1921, Xinya Film
Company).[22]
The emergence of these films ushered in a productive period
of long features, which can be divided into two general
types: one based on contemporary life and the other set in
history. The first type produced a few outstanding social
problem films such as Orphan rescues his grandfather
(Gu'er jiu zu ji 1923, Mingxing Film Company).
The second type of films fall into three categories in
chronological order: baishi pian (literally, films as
unofficial accounts of history), guzhuang pian
(ancient costume films), and wuxia pian (martial arts
films). All three genres drew on classical novels, drama,
legends, and traditional performing arts. In the category of
baishi pian, those based upon traditional performing
arts included influential films such as Pearl pagoda
(Zhenzhu ta 1926), The tragic history of Liang
Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai (Liang Zhu tong shi 1926),
and White snake (Baishe zhuan 1926). The last
two were box office hits, starting the first wave of
domestic film's commercial success as well as the movement
of films of traditional themes.
[23] The success of
the baishi films was followed by a flood of
guzhuang films in 1927 and 1928. Seventy-five such
films were produced, making up more than one third of the
total films produced during the period.[24]
The contents of these films were similar to those
baishi films; differences lay in the fact that
characters in the guzhuang films wore ancient
costumes resembling those in performances of traditional
theatre, whereas clothes worn by characters in the
baishi films were anachronistically
realistic.[25]
One
reason for the rise of ancient costume films was to reach a
larger audience in cities and rural regions. At the time,
the film market was dominated by American films: domestic
films were usually shown in second or third-rate movie
theatres, which were frequented by audiences with fewer
economic resources and lower education. These audiences had
long been immersed in the culture of traditional theatre and
musical storytelling. To cater to the taste of these people,
ancient costume films adapted from traditional performing
arts were appropriate choices. They also helped to promote
low brow literature or popular culture as opposed to elite
literature and the Westernised culture that was moving into
the big cities at the time. One of the most representative
films of this genre was The romance of the western
chamber (Xixiang ji 1927, Minxin Film Company).
It was adapted from the famous Yuan dynasty zaju play
of the same title, using cinematic techniques in a variety
of ways such as static long shots, "rapid edits, overhead
shots, and stylized, superimposed close-ups" to achieve
theatrical spectacle in the depiction of the romance of
Zhang Gong and Yingying and to create special effects to
realise the surreal dream and the fighting scene. In
"developing this distinctive genre, studios. . . addressed
local audiences and forwarded the independent domestic film
industry."[26] [22]
Hu Xingliang and Zhang Ruilin, eds., Zhongguo dianying
shi (A history of Chinese film) (Beijing:
Zhongyang Guangbo Dianshi Daxue Chuban She, 1995),
24-26. [23]
Hong Shi, "Di yi ci langchao - mopian qi Zhongguo shangye
dianying xianxiang shuping" ("The first wave: a review of
the phenomenon of Chinese commercial cinema during the
period of silent films"), Dangdai dianying
(Contemporary cinema), 2 (1995): 6; and Tan
Chunfa, 19. [24]
Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 210. [25]
Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 177. [26]
Kristine Harris, "The romance of the western chamber
and the classical subject film in 1920s Shanghai," in
Yingjin Zhang, 1999, 60; 72. Amid the fervor
of ancient costume films, there emerged a genre of martial
arts films in the last years of the 1920s. In this genre,
one can glimpse influences of traditional theatre,
especially Beijing opera, in acrobatic fighting, stylized
combat, and swordplay choreography that often featured in
these films. Li Feifei: a female knight-errant
(Nüxia Li Feifei 1925, Tianyi Film Company),
one of the earliest examples of this genre, employed a
Beijing opera performer to play the knight-errant,
exhibiting acrobatic skills.[27]
These early films paved the way for the immense popularity
of the genre, represented by The burning of red lotus
temple (Huoshao honglian si 1928, Mingxing Film
Company), which continued in a series of eighteen films.
Within the next three years, over 250 martial arts films
were produced,[28]
and the origin of the world famous martial arts films that
were to be made in Hong Kong in later decades can be
partially traced back to this period.[29] [27]
Hong Shi, 8. [28]
Yingjin Zhang and Zhiwei Xiao, 237. [29]
Bey Logan made a persuasive analysis of the Beijing opera's
influence upon Hong Kong kungfu films in his Hong
Kong action cinema (Woodstock, New York: The Overlook
Press, 1995), 9-21. Towards the end
of the 1920s, Chinese movie theatres began to screen the
newly-invented sound films from America. To make the first
sound film in China would be another important milestone in
the film industry. Again, filmmakers turned to Beijing opera
for inspiration, producing Sing-song girl red peony
(Genü hong mudan 1931, Mingxing Film Company),
about the bitter life of a Beijing opera actress. Benefiting
from sound, the plot was interspersed with four arias from
well-known Beijing operas: The stronghold of the Mu
village (Muke zhai), Yu Tang Chun the
courtesan (Yu Tang Chun), Si Lang visits his
mother (Si Lang tan mu), and Capturing
Gao Deng (Na Gao Deng). For the first
time, Beijing opera could be heard on the silver screen, and
the film delighted filmgoers in major Chinese cities as well
as overseas.[30]
The second sound film, Yu the beauty (Yu meiren
1931, Youlian Studio), was a story of a theatrical
troupe, presenting scenes of theatrical performance. Other
studios followed suit, making sound films which often
incorporated theatrical singing. With the release of these
films, the Chinese film industry gradually entered the sound
era; silent films continued for a few years more, until,
around 1936, they were phased out. [30]
Li Suyuan and Hu Jubin, 280. In the late 1930s
and 1940s, despite the fact that, for most studios, the
priority was producing films of social realism and
documentaries of the Anti-Japanese War, films of traditional
theatre continued to be produced. Unlike previous filmed
performances which took scenes of particular plays, films of
traditional theatre in this period included some complete
operas such as the Beijing opera Wu Han kills his
wife (Zhan jingtang 1937) featuring the
well-known actor Zhou Xinfang in the lead role, and the
Shaoxing opera Xianglin's wife (Xianglin
sao 1948).[31]
When Fei Mu, one of the well-known directors at the time,
and his fellow filmmakers considered making colour films in
1947, their first thought went to colourful theatrical
performances. The next year they made the first colour film,
Eternal regret (Sheng si hen 1948),
with Mei Lanfang in the lead role.[32]
As we have seen through this survey, filmmakers returned to
traditional Chinese theatre at each new stage in the
technological development of the Chinese cinema. The Western
camera was the magic and the Eastern theatre was the show:
by now the magic camera had completed the process of
revealing the acting, the colour and the sound of the
show. [31]
Hu Xingliang and Zhang Ruilin, 91; 98. The English title of
the literary work on which the film Xianglin sao is
based is The New Year's sacrifice. [32]
Wang Changfa and Liu Hua, Mei Lanfang nianpu (The
chronicle of Mei Lanfang ) (Nanjing: Hehai Daxue Chuban
She, 1994), 155-156. After the
People's Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949, films
developed in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan without
formal exchanges[33],
yet these three regions shared a tradition of the
integration of film with traditional theatre. The mainland
government continued to support the genre of filmed
theatrical performances, even during the years of the
Cultural Revolution. From 1949 to 1979, 1109 films
(including features, cartoons, artistic documentaries, and
artistic films of theatrical performances) were made by
various studios in China. Among them, 217 films are artistic
films of operas in traditional forms, representing 20% of
the total. The most productive years for this genre were
1956, 1957, 1959, 1960, 1962, 1965, and 1976. (Of the 62
such films made in 1976, 49 films were not released to the
public, but made, perhaps, for educational
purposes.)[34]
The most influential films of this type were undoubtedly
Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai (a Shaoxing opera 1954),
The heavenly match (Tianxian pei, a
huangmei opera 1955), Fifteen strings of cash
(Shiwu guan, a kunqu opera 1956), Monkey
King beats the white-bone demon three times
(Sun Wukong san da baigu jing, a shaoju opera
1960), Dream of the red chamber (Honglou meng,
a Shaoxing opera 1962), and the revolutionary model
Beijing operas (performed in the traditional style) made
between 1970 and 1974. These films reached almost every
corner of the mainland. The huge success of the first two
opera films mentioned here inspired filmmakers in Hong Kong
and Taiwan to make an unprecedented number of opera films in
the 1950s and 1960s. [33]
See articles in this issue by Jeanne Deslandes (on Taiwan)
and Linda Lai (on Hong Hong). [34]
These calculations are based on the titles listed in
Zhongguo yishu yingpian bianmu 1949-1979 (The
catalogue of Chinese films 1949-1979) edited by China
Film Archives (Zhongguo Dianying Ziliao Guan) and the
Film Institute of the China Art Research Centre (Zhongguo
Yishu Yanjiu Yuan Dianying Yanjiu Suo) (Beijing: Wenyi
Yishu Chuban She, 1981). Since 1979, China
has undergone tremendous changes, socially, economically,
and culturally. After a short heyday in the late 1970s
following the end of the Cultural Revolution, the
traditional Chinese theatre, be it the Beijing opera or
other regional operas, underwent a decline and was gradually
losing audiences in the 1980s and 1990s. Part of the reason
for this was rapid economic development in China that
ushered in a variety of new forms of entertainment,
including karaoke (sing-along) music halls which
featured popular songs of the Hong Kong-Taiwan style,
ballrooms, foreign movies on video tape, electronic games,
coffee shops with light music and, above all, colour TV
programs. These new forms of entertainment drew
ever-increasing audiences, especially among young people, by
bringing convenient entertainment to families both in cities
and in the countryside. Traditional
theatre, with its slow pace, could not catch the rhythm of
modern entertainment, so efforts have been made in the past
fifteen years to promote and revitalise it, including
through television, which entered more and more households
in China in the 1980s. With few exceptions, film's
traditional responsibility for cinematic representation of
theatre has now been shifted to television. Technically, the
cinema and television represent traditional theatre in
similar ways,[35]
and using cinematic modes on television carries on a long
tradition. It is, thus, both technologically and culturally
logical to include in this study a discussion of cinematic
versions of traditional theatre that only appear on
television. [35]
John Ellis commented on the technical similarity between the
two media. He states: "Both are media which combine sounds
and images, and are predominantly used to provide narrative
fiction. . . . Their particular products are to some extent
interchangeable: cinema films are shown on TV, some
materials made for TV surfaces in the cinema. Ideas
circulate freely between the two media. Films give rise to
TV series; shooting techniques are transposed from one
medium to the other. . . ." [Visible fictions,
(Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982),
175]. Over twenty
years, television has expanded the genre. As well as live
broadcasting of theatrical productions, there have been four
forms of cinematic representation of traditional drama
through television. To illustrate the characteristics of
these forms, I use as an example different representations
of the famous Yuan dynasty play The romance of the
western chamber. In the 1980s, Tian Han's 1950s Beijing
opera version was first televised with the famous singer
Zhang Junqiu as Cui Yingying. This category is wutai xiqu
yishu pian, a version that preserves the style of a
stage production, using a realistic setting shot from
different angles. Another category is termed xiqu dianshi
lianxu ju, a TV series in which actors perform the way
they do on stage, but in a realistic environment that does
not allow certain stage conventions, such as pantomime. Such
an example is Wu Chen's 1988 adaptation of Su Xuean's 1950s
Shaoxing opera version in a series of four segments. This TV
series was followed by the type of musical TV drama termed
huangmeixi yinyue dianshi ju , in which characters in
a realistic setting speak naturally but sing in the tunes of
the huangmei opera. The last category is called
dianshi lianxu ju, which refers to regular television
serial drama in a modern spoken form. There have been two
different adaptations in this category: one by the
Performance Division of the Beijing Film Institute in 1986
and the other, in 1995, by the Chinese Television Drama
Production Centre, in association with the Yongji Municipal
Government, the Chinese Asia Television Art Centre, and the
Chinese Research Association for The romance of the
western chamber.[36]
This example demonstrates the potential for a classic
dramatic text to be adapted in various styles and presented
to a larger audience through television. The scale of
television production of traditional theatre has been large:
in addition to the Central Television Station, whose
programs can be received all over the country, most
provincial stations and municipal stations in big cities
have special channels and programs solely devoted to
broadcasting various renditions of traditional
theatre. [36]
The statistics presented here resulted from my original
research on the adaptations of Yuan drama since the 1980s. I
viewed all these adapted versions. The sheer
quantity of opera films and films based on or inspired by
performing arts reflected in the above survey reveals that
traditional theatre has been a deeply rooted national symbol
for audio-visual entertainment in China. Although cinema has
been generally considered as an imported Western
entertainment, its growth on Chinese soil has constantly
needed fertilisation from the indigenous performance
culture. The survey has also demonstrated that in its early
stages Chinese cinema relied on traditional theatre as one
of its content sources to reach audiences of ordinary people
and to develop itself as an independent domestic industry
while in the most recent past traditional theatre used both
cinematic modes and television to revitalise and present
itself to audiences of younger generations. Besides the
abundant opera films produced in China as discussed in the
above survey, traditional theatre and its performers have
found their way into the subject matter of non-opera
fictional films from time to time. As mentioned above, the
first two Chinese non-silent films were such cases:
Sing-song girl red peony concerned the life of a
Beijing opera singer and Yu the beauty was about a
theatrical troupe. More recently, titles familiar to Western
audiences such as Stage sisters (Wutai jiemei
1965), Woman demon human (Ren gui qing 1987),
Farewell my concubine (Bawang bieji 1993),
The puppetmaster (Xi meng rensheng 1993), and
The king of masks (Bian lian 1996) all use
traditional theatre as their subject matter. In this
section, I will use the critically acclaimed and much
discussed Farewell my concubine to illustrate how
film interacts with Chinese theatre in its narration, how
film uses theatrical elements to allude to and to satirise
modern Chinese politics, and how the stage functions as a
mirror to reflect life. The film's story
spans a period of some fifty years during which the leading
characters live under five different political regimes, yet
the plot is developed in a narrative structure composed of
the intricate arrangement of theatre performances. First,
the overall narrative structure of the film builds on the
double meaning of its title "Farewell my concubine." The
Chinese title of the film is Bawang bieji (literal
translation: "The king bids farewell to his concubine").
This is the title of a famous Beijing opera, which tells the
story of a parting moment between the king of the Chu at the
end of the Qin Dynasty and his favourite concubine, Yu Ji.
The king's army has been surrounded by the victorious army
of Liu Bang, the king of the Han. Predicting that he has
little chance of winning, he urges Yu Ji to flee. Instead,
the concubine commits suicide, remaining faithful to her
master. Thus the opera ends. This Beijing opera was adapted
from an earlier source and in the 1920s was popularised
through performances by Mei Lanfang as Yu Ji and Yang
Xiaolou as the king. Chen Kaige's film makes a pun on the
title of the Beijing opera, portraying a story of the actor
Cheng Dieyi who, in the role of Yu Ji, commits suicide out
of faithfulness to the Beijing opera and to his unrequited
love for his fellow actor, Duan Xiaolou, who often plays the
king with Cheng. The performance of Yu Ji's suicide is a
theatrical illusion, yet the actual suicide of Cheng Dieyi
is the realisation of that illusion. Thus the title
"Farewell my concubine" at the beginning foreshadows Duan
Xiaolou's farewell to Cheng Dieyi at the end, setting the
overall framework for the interplay of theatre and life
throughout the film. In addition to
the representation of Farewell my concubine, the film
also represents and refers to several other famous operas
including the Beijing opera The drunk princess
(Gui Fei zui jiu), the kunqu opera A nun
longing for worldly pleasure (Si fan), the
kunqu opera Peony pavilion: stroll in the
garden (Mudan ting: you yuan), the Beijing opera
Lin Chong escapes at night (Lin Chong ye ben),
and the revolutionary model Beijing opera Red lantern
(Hongdeng ji). The scenes from the first three operas
and Farewell my concubine are presented by their
linkage through the qingyi role - a theatrical role
depicting a young female character of high social status and
sung in falsetto - in which Cheng Dieyi specialises as the
actor. The lyric lines from the other two Beijing operas
Lin Chong escapes at night and Red lantern are
presented either by other characters or as background music.
The presentation of these scenes and arias, like those of
Farewell my concubine, is not merely theatrical
display. It also serves the purpose of developing the story
and portraying the characters of the film. The familiar plot
of the film is the relation between two Beijing opera actors
- Cheng Dieyi and Duan Xiaolou - from their childhood in the
theatrical school through various stages of their common
acting career to the suicide of Cheng Dieyi. When they begin
to know each other in the school, Cheng Dieyi is trained to
be in the qingyi role and Duan Xiaolou in the
jing (painted face) role. The first part of the film
highlights the bitter life and rigorous training of the
theatrical apprentices through the learning process of Cheng
Dieyi in his qingyi role. The film intensifies the
scene of Cheng reciting a theatrical self-introduction by
the nun of the kunqu piece The nun seeks worldly
pleasure: Every time the
little Cheng comes to the last two lyric lines, he confuses
"youthful man" with "pretty maiden." He recites the lines
according to his own sex: "I was originally a youthful man,
not a pretty maiden." Repeatedly, he is physically punished
and forced to say: "I was originally a pretty maiden, not a
youthful man." Originally, these two lines are sung in a
highly stylised fashion in the kunqu opera, which
might not be intelligible to the film's audience. Therefore,
in the film these lines are recited repeatedly in the
Mandarin language so as to forge an inescapable impression
upon the audience's mind that the rigid training for
achieving theatrical illusion has made the young male actor
gradually become a "female". The pressure not only comes
from the strict teacher but also from his best friend, Duan
Xiaolou, who persuades him by saying: "Think of yourself as
a female and don't ever recite the two lines wrongly again."
Structurally, the first part of the film ends with the young
Cheng Dieyi finally reciting the two lines accurately. It is
neither the content nor the theme of the kunqu opera
that has relevance to the theme of the film. It is only
these two lyric lines that have a significant bearing on the
theme of the film and the characterisation of Cheng Dieyi.
Emphasis on various scenes of Cheng Dieyi learning to
memorise these two lines leaves a strong impression upon the
audience that Chen Dieyi's sexual deviation is moulded by a
unique theatrical culture. As the two actors
graduate from the theatrical school and begin to perform on
stage, the Beijing opera Farewell my concubine
becomes the pivotal point around which the second half of
the film's plot is developed: in this section of the film,
part of this opera is enacted more than five times. No doubt
the enactment is itself a theatrical display, adding
aesthetic and exotic qualities to the cinematic art. What is
more significant, various references to and presentations of
scenes of this Beijing opera serve as a narrative link.
Every time a scene from this opera is performed on the stage
within the film, it is to a different audience (Japanese,
then Nationalist, then Communist), signalling a change of
historical period. The theme of the opera analysed by the
schoolmaster in the following sentences is developed into a
motto for Cheng Dieyi's life: "Yu Ji commits suicide, being
faithful all the way to the end. This is the principle of
how to be an actor as well as a human being." The theme of
the opera becomes Cheng Dieyi's motto: he remains faithful
all the time to his theatrical profession and to his
unilateral homosexual love for Duan Xiaolou. It is this
life-long commitment that has made Cheng Dieyi continue to
perform with Duan Xiaolou despite the difficult relations
between the two, caused by Duan's marriage to the prostitute
Juxian. Not only is
Chinese theatre used as a dominant element in the narrative
structure of the film, but the way it is presented also
serves as an effective method of alluding to real life.
Although the Beijing opera Farewell my concubine is
enacted more than five times in the film, each time it is
presented differently. The first time, the king engages in a
heroic fight against his enemies: the king's heroism, the
actor's wonderful acrobatics and the audience's stormy
applause inspire Cheng Dieyi and Duan Xiaolou in their
childhood to pursue a career in performing the opera. When
the opera is later presented, the king's heroism is no
longer visible. Only four lyric lines sung by the concubine
are highlighted: Because these
four lines are sung again and again at different times and
on different historical occasions, they become a motif. As
Julia Kristeva points out, language itself retains a
semiotic flux, especially through its repeated resonance.
For semiotic material to become symbolic it must be
stabilised, and this involves rhythmic drives. With its
lyrics shown in subtitles on the screen, this song conveys
its meaning to a much broader audience whether or not they
understand Beijing opera, and so becomes indexical. The plot
develops from the Northern Warlords period, through the
Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalist regime, to the Japanese
occupation and finally to Communist rule. With these four
lines sung in the scenes where a change of historical period
takes place, the complaints of the concubine allude to the
real situation at various stages of Chinese history. Having
grown up in a tradition in which literature and art have
often been criticised by political regimes as innuendo, both
the director of the film and its audience are fully aware of
the political comments this Beijing opera aria has made
about every government in modern Chinese history. Theatrical
presentations which allude to situations in real life are
abundant in the film. When Juxian first goes to the theatre
to see Cheng Dieyi and Duan Xiaolou's performance of
Farewell my concubine, the portion that is presented
on screen is only a few words said by the king to his
concubine: "My lady! Around us are songs of the Chu kingdom.
These songs indicate that Liu Bang and his army have
occupied the land of the Chu. Alas, I have lost my battle.
I'm afraid that today is the day of our parting." No sooner
has he finished these words than the screen shows a close-up
of Juxian sitting in the audience, smiling. This montage
foreshadows the emotional separation between Cheng Dieyi and
Duan Xiaolou once Juxian enters their world. Later, when
Chen Dieyi and Duan Xiaolou quarrel over Duan's decision to
marry Juxian, they convey their messages through theatrical
allusions. When asked if he can be the chief witness to the
wedding ceremony, Cheng retorts sarcastically: "I cannot
perform the opera of Huang Tianba and his prostitute. My
teacher never taught me how to perform it!" Later when Cheng
asks Duan to visit Master Yuan, Duan refuses and takes the
opportunity to retort: "I'm a false king, but you ARE a real
concubine." When asked to perform the opera privately with
Master Yuan in his courtyard, Cheng sings: These lines could
be understood as Cheng's own lamentation after Duan's energy
is consumed by Juxian. The sad and passive tune of the lyric
harmonises with Cheng's capitulating mood when he accepts
Master Yuan's sexual advances. When the Japanese commanders
force Cheng to perform in their headquarters as a condition
of the release of the imprisoned Duan Xiaolou, he sings an
aria from the kunqu opera Peony pavilion:
strolling in the garden. The lyrics are as
follows: Symbolically,
these lines fit the historical situation: the Chinese had no
time to relax or enjoy themselves when their land was
trampled by the Japanese invaders. When performing for the
KMT soldiers, Cheng sings the following lines about the
king's defeated army: This situation is
reminiscent of the KMT army in the late 1940s when many of
its soldiers deserted their posts. During the theatre reform
movement under the communist regime, Cheng is forcibly
replaced by Xiao Si, his foster son, in the role of the
concubine. When Xiao Si is performing with Duan Xiaolou, the
performance is not presented on screen; only the music and
lyrics are heard off-screen. In the frame is a close-up of
Cheng Dieyi, silent and lonely in the dressing room. At this
moment, the lyrics sung by the king are distinctly heard:
"All this has troubled and frightened you!" The singing line
accurately describes Cheng Dieyi's mood: frightened, angry,
upset, and feeling powerless due to the political pressure
from the authorities and from his foster son's betrayal.
This line also carries Duan's apology that he is not brave
enough to stand up against political pressure. Finally, when
Juxian hangs herself at her home after having been
humiliated in public by Red Guards and "betrayed" by her own
husband, the off-scene music from the radio is an aria from
the revolutionary model Beijing opera Red lantern.
From the radio, the leading character Li Tiemei
sings: On the one hand,
the choice of this background music is appropriate to the
historical time of the plot. On the other hand, independent
of the context of the Red lantern, the chosen section
of the aria coupled with the image of Juxian's hanging body
creates a solemn yet tragic atmosphere, alluding to the
bitter years both Duan Xiaolou and Juxian have gone through.
All these examples demonstrate a pattern in the film's
arrangement of the operatic arias in connection with the
plot development: theatre is used as a mirror to reflect
real life. The interplay
between theatre and life is also manifested in its power to
trigger the audience's associations between fictitious
elements in the film and facts in real life. Fictitious
elements surrounding the leading characters remind the
audience of the real facts in the Beijing opera circles. For
example, Cheng Dieyi shares the same family name with Cheng
Yanqiu, one of the four greatest male actors in the female
role, who lived in the same historical period as Cheng
Dieyi. Duan Xiaolou shares the same given name with the real
actor, Yang Xiaolou, who made the role of the king famous.
In real life, Yang is said to have sold watermelon, an
incident reflected in the film. Cheng Dieyi's concealed
homosexuality and drug addiction can also be found in the
circles of traditional theatre. The deliberate mixture of
the fictitious and the real further testifies to the Chinese
common belief that a human life is just like a show on the
stage. As we have seen,
elements from the traditional Chinese theatre provide an
overall narrative structure for the film, serve as effective
devices connecting the film's various epic and episodic
events, and allude to and satirise modern Chinese politics.
The interaction between theatrical elements and the story's
development mirrors the interplay of reality with illusion
and of the present with history, thus nurturing a rich and
complex theme. The study of these interrelations also shows
the significant role that theatre, as a cultural force, has
played in moulding people's outlook and in engaging people
in social discourses. The above
analysis of Farewell my concubine indicates how
theatrical elements can interplay with cinematic modes in
films with theatre and its performers as subject matter.
What, then, of films with other subject matter? Obviously,
these cannot obtrusively use theatrical performances since
their subject matter does not warrant them. Yet some
conscientious directors and composers make effective use of
music and songs from traditional theatre to create narrative
or musical motifs for their non-theatrical films. Such
practices are recent phenomena. In the past, films without
textual reference to traditional theatre usually used
Western musical instruments to compose background music
although a number of them did contain Chinese folk songs
sung by characters within the diegesis. Using traditional
Chinese musical instruments to create a music motif was not
the norm, not to mention the use of traditional operatic
music. Since the Fifth
Generation directors entered the scene, a significant number
of films have consciously employed music from traditional
theatre, when they wish to create an atmosphere of
authenticity for a particular local culture reflected in
their film while, at the same time, striving for a kind of
symbolism with which Chinese audiences are familiar. Of all
the directors and composers, Zhang Yimou and his music
collaborators are among the most conscious in this respect.
To look at how theatrical elements are used in
non-theatrical films, I will focus on those of Zhang's films
that employ elements from traditional theatre - an aspect
neglected or less discussed in other studies of his
films. The films in
question are Raise the red lantern (Da hong
denglong gaogao gua 1991), The story of Qiuju
(Qiuju da guansi 1992), and To Live (Huo
zhe 1994), all three adapted from contemporary
novelettes. It is worth noting that Chen Yuanbin's The
lawsuit of the Wan family (Wan jia susong) and Yu
Hua's To live (Huo zhe), the literary
sources of the last two films, do not have any reference to
traditional theatre. Although Su Tong's written story
Wives and concubines (Qi qie chengqun)
describes the third wife as a retired Beijing opera singer,
it does not have red lanterns or Beijing opera music as
rituals. Yet Zhang Yimou's film adaptations seek inspiration
from operatic music. In Raise the
red lantern, two types of operatic music formulate the
rhythms with other sounds. They are Beijing opera percussion
music and the vocal chanting of a xipi interlude from
Beijing opera string music. It is the Beijing opera
percussion music that starts the film, a type of music that
would have been traditionally thought to be irrelevant to
the opening scene of Songlian walking alone on her way to
Master Chen's home, because neither the subject matter nor
the leading character centres around the Beijing opera. On
the stage of the traditional Chinese theatre, it is a custom
to strike percussion instruments to open a show. A show
(xi) is very self-consciously unreal as opposed to
life, the reality of the viewer. Yet Chinese people often
compare life to theatre. Common sayings such as "Life is
like a play," "Life is a big stage," "When coming upon the
stage, one needs to join in the show" and "The stage is a
mirror for life" are widely used metaphors for the brevity,
variety and contingency of life and the referentiality of
theatre to life. It is on this metaphorical level that
Beijing opera percussion music is used at the very beginning
of the film, proclaiming the start of the show, the
beginning of Songlian's life. This percussion music later
develops into a motif which resonates to the recurrent scene
of the whole family gathering in the courtyard to hear the
announcement of the butler on behalf of Master Chen, to the
images of raising the red lanterns, and to the spreading of
the exciting news that the fourth wife has become pregnant.
The effect is a kind of authenticity achieved by merging the
pseudo Chinese culture of the lantern-sex relationship into
the pure and uniquely Chinese percussion music. The loud and
energetic striking of the drum, gongs, cymbals and clappers
constitute a rhythmic structure for the story. Like
theatrical performances used in Farewell my concubine
to develop the plot through constant changes of historical
period, this percussion music is a narrative link between
different episodes in the cyclic development of the film's
plot. Linked with this
percussion music is the percussion sound of the wooden
hammers that first accompanies the image of foot massage.
With its repetition it gradually takes on symbolic weight.
In the latter half of the film, when the sound reappears
without the actual scene of foot massage, the image remains
in the minds of the characters as well as the audience.
Thus, the sound of foot massage becomes sometimes a
reference of sexual desire, sometimes a symbol of status,
and sometimes a tool to develop the story. These formulaic
music and sounds are further supplemented by a vocal
imitation in chorus of the xipi interlude with the
swift repetition of the melody "Long ge li ge long." The
increasing volume of this repetitive voice imitation creates
an atmosphere of intensity, urgency, suspense and horror. It
occurs when Yan'er, Songlian's housemaid, faints after she
was forced to kneel on the snowy ground as punishment, and
later when Songlian walks on the snowy roof toward the "room
of the dead" before she is astonished to find that the third
wife has been murdered inside. In contrast with
Beijing opera's overbearing music is the melody of the
flute, which is reminiscent of the melodious music of
kunqu opera. The music arises when Songlian is by
herself, fondly regarding the instrument her father gave
her, when she attentively listens to the young master
playing the flute, and when she sobs after learning that
Master Chen has destroyed her flute. The coupling of these
visual images with the flute music signifies the loving
attachment that Songlian has toward her deceased father,
reminds her of a happy past that has been long lost, and
also suggests her romantic feeling toward the oldest son of
the family - a longing for freedom from the smothering
atmosphere of the Chen household. Yet, like all her
predecessors, Songlian cannot escape from the repressive
living compound of the Chen family. Finally, the singing of
the Beijing opera in the voice of the third wife through her
records is mixed with the reprise of the percussion music,
the vocal imitation of the xipi interlude, and the
sound of foot massage to reach an acoustic climax to
accompany the final scenes: the living complex is believed
to be haunted by the spirit of the third wife; Songlian, who
has discovered the horror of the murder, is pronounced
crazy, thus eternally imprisoned within the four walls; and
a new wife, the fifth one, is brought into the household to
start another life cycle like the one Songlian has
experienced. Like Raise the
red lantern, The story of Qiuju uses music and
lyrics from traditional theatre. The theme song, or the
musical motif, is an aria from the regional qinqiang
theatre, which, like the dialect spoken by the characters,
provides local flavour and authenticity. It starts the film
and then is played off-scene the moment Qiuju sets off on
her way from her house to the town, the county or the city
to sue the village head who has injured her husband. And the
scene remains more or less the same: the pregnant Qiuju is
on a moving vehicle on a zigzagging path leading out of the
village toward a background of mountains. The same music
accompanies similar scenes five times altogether. Qiuju's
five journeys indicate her desire to go against tradition in
order to achieve justice. Yet her strong desire is offset by
the recurrence of the unchanging age-old music, a sign of
permanence. Though the lyrics are mostly incomprehensible
for general audiences, the same musical rhythm is preceded
by the two chanted words: "Let's go!" and the only
incomplete lyrics comprehensible for audiences are "Every
year, every month, everyday, we will go... and the peach
blossoms remain the same..." It seems that these lyrics
precisely describe Qiuju's predicament and point to a social
pattern: life has been, still is and will be unchanged in
the countryside, and so are the human relationships in the
rural community. Thus an irony is created by the
juxtaposition of the visual images and the recurrent music,
an irony enhanced by the final scene. Qiuju, in the midst of
the celebration of the first month of life for her son, is
puzzled by the fact that the village head is arrested for a
fifteen-day sentence due to her legal action against him.
The scene takes a close-up shot of Qiuju, perplexed and
confused; the same qinqiang music with its lyrics
returns as a voice-over accompaniment. The question remains:
will Qiuju want justice or let the traditional relationship
between the villagers and their leader remain unchanged? Or
will Qiuju's earlier actions for justice really achieve what
she wants? Despite the cinematic emphasis on a newsreel
slice-of-life style, the insertion of the operatic music and
its recurrence not only mark the narrative pattern, but also
make both narration and musical themes rich and
subtle. A system of
patterning, as seen in the recurrence of the operatic music
to the image of Qiuju on her way to seek justice, is also
reflected in the relationship between the operatic singing
of the shadow play and the changes of historical periods in
To live. The shadow play with its energetic songs and
colourful puppets does not exist in the original novelette:
the film borrows it from a rich local performance culture in
Shaanxi Province and uses it as a rhythmic vehicle to
develop the story from the 1940s to the 1970s. There are a
series of intense scenes centring around the shadow play,
each ushering in a new historical period. For most of these
scenes, folk songs are sung behind the screen of shadow
images and the singing is interrupted by damage to the
screen, signifying a change of historical time. First,
during a performance the screen is pierced through by a
bayonet of a KMT soldier, signifying the end of a peaceful
period in Fugui's hometown. Fugui and Chunsheng are then
drafted by the KMT. Later, when the KMT is defeated, it is
the bayonet of a Communist soldier that lifts a shadow
puppet, which, through montage, directly leads to a scene of
a performance by Fugui and Chunsheng for the Communist army,
indicating the beginning of a new period of Communist rule.
The next show of the shadow play is on the public square of
Fugui's home town where masses are mobilised to smelt steel
in the period of the Great Leap Forward. This enthusiastic
singing is interrupted by Fugui's vomiting of vinegar onto
the shadow play screen. Though the incident is caused by a
practical joke played on Fugui by his own son, the vomiting
achieves the same effect as does the bayonet in interrupting
the show: it marks the end of the shadow play and
foreshadows the failure of the Great Leap Forward, during
which Fugui's own son dies as a victim of the nationwide
blind enthusiasm. Later, the burning of the shadow puppets
(as a remnant of the Four Olds) ushers in the Cultural
Revolution, the most destructive period for the PRC.
Finally, the film ends with Fugui's grandson happily raising
a group of young chicks in the big box that had held the
puppets. Here, a connection between the only remnant of the
shadow play and the change of historical time is again made.
Towards the end of the Cultural Revolution when the film
ends, most Chinese people became disillusioned and no longer
believed in communism. What they hoped for was a better
life, with food and comfort, as reflected in the final
dialogue between Fugui and his grandson. This last image of
the puppet box in which the young chicks are to grow is
highly symbolic. The preservation of the box represents the
perseverance of Chinese culture; the innocent young lives of
the grandson and chicks seem designed to signify a hope of
the Chinese people for a new period to come - a period that
will bring a better life. Alternating with
the singing of the shadow play is a musical motif by a local
instrument called banhu, a major musical instrument
of the qinqiang opera. It opens the film and recurs
with each of Fugui's journeys for shadow play, of his son's
death in the Big Leap Forward Movement, of his daughter
being sent away for marriage during the Cultural Revolution,
of Chunsheng (labelled a "capitalist roader") leaving
Fugui's home alone into the darkness, and of Fugui's
daughter's death in the hospital. The return of the same
music marks the film's end. This short musical passage is
always played softly, signifying the passivity and
resilience in Fugui and, by extension, the Chinese people,
accepting their fate within the different political periods
in contemporary China. As is reflected
by Zhang Yimou's films, music or arias from traditional
theatre are used in recent films mainly for three purposes:
to set up a cultural tableau for the theatricality of
individual films in order to achieve a kind of authenticity,
or Chineseness in the presence of foreign audiences; to
serve as a narrative device or musical motif to help develop
the story; and to create a kind of symbolism that can be
understood by general domestic audiences. The viewer's
experience of these films, naturally, is greatly enhanced by
the rhythm, voice quality, and lively melodies of arias and
their orchestration. Through their repeated resonance to
recurrent yet ever-changing visuals, music and songs in a
given film create a structural rhythm, ensure an organic
unity and generate a semiotic flux. The audience's
understanding of the film is thus enriched by the complexity
and subtlety of a dense network of meanings that elements
from traditional theatre have helped to create. As we have seen
in the previous three sections, traditional theatre has
enriched Chinese cinema in many ways. Then as the result of
this constant interaction between theatre and film, what
kinds of effect has cinema brought upon traditional theatre?
To seek a comprehensive answer, I have looked at various
cinematic versions of traditional operas on film and
television in comparison with the traditional stage
conventions and acting style. As I pointed out
in the first section, the earliest opera films of Fengtai
Photography Shop were made with static shots: the camera
angle did not affect the way an operatic episode was
enacted. By the time that Mei Lanfang's performances were
filmed in 1920, directors began to use realistic settings
and to experiment with cinematic techniques to create
special effects. On the one hand cinematic modes helped
realize the beauty of traditional theatre while, on the
other, the realism that the camera brought did not allow the
full realisation of certain conventions such as the bare
stage, the symbolism of the one-desk-two-chair setting, and
pantomimic gestures in the absence of real objects. The
essence of traditional Chinese theatre is its non-realism of
acting and staging. A character walking a circle on a bare
stage signifies his long journey; a whip in his hand with a
stylised body movement suggests his mounting of a horse; the
stage is "immediately compartmented" by pantomimic gestures
of opening or closing a door "into inner and outer playing
areas . . . without any demand on
credibility"[37];
a desk and two chairs arranged differently can symbolise a
judge's court, an inn room, or even a mountain. Traditional
conventions like these cannot be mechanically translated
into opera films. Since the cinematic camera first
introduced its narrative mode into traditional theatre,
Chinese filmmakers and theatrical performers have been faced
with the challenge of keeping a balance between cinematic
realism and theatrical non-realism. When making cinematic
versions of traditional theatre, they have tried to preserve
the essence of a particular theatrical style through
innovative use of camera. [37]
A. C. Scott, "The performance of classical theatre," in
Colin Mackerras, ed., Chinese theatre:from its origins to
the present day (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
1983), 142. One such use of
cinematographic techniques quickens the pace of dramatic
development. On film, the traditional entrances and exits of
Beijing opera conventions providing for changes of scene
have been in some cases greatly modified and in others
eliminated by the swift change of scenes realised through
change of camera angles and montage techniques. As a
commonly-used device to highlight the melodious yet lengthy
Beijing opera arias, the screen shows by montage two scenes
either alternately or at the same time: one continuous scene
is a close-up picture of the detailed expression of the
singing character and the other is a series of background
scenes showing the events and scenery described in the
lyrics. This allows the audience to appreciate the voice,
facial expression and body movement of the singing
character, the melody of the aria, and the literary flavour
of the lyrics while enjoying the scenes created as
reflections of the lyric lines. This is what I like to call
the fusion of the static and the kinetic. With the kinetic,
the sense of slow space is greatly reduced. Furthermore, the
incomprehensibility of some difficult lyrics is overcome
with the help of the image and the captions shown on the
screen. One example is an aria that Cao Xueqin sings in the
television serial Beijing opera Cao Xueqin (1991)
when he re-visits his Jiangnan residence in his middle age.
The lyric mentions different places Cao Xueqin is revisiting
and his thought of his female cousins: the cinematography
makes them visible on the screen in the flow of the pensive
tune. A further example, from Twelve child-actresses in
the red chamber (Honglou shi'er guan , a Beijing
opera 1992), is the heroine Fangguan's singing soliloquy
when she is imprisoned in a deserted house of the Jia
family's complex mansion. In this long, pensive, sorrowful,
melodious aria, she recalls how the twelve child actresses
shared happiness and bitterness and recounts what she sees
in her delirium: the scenes are artistically created on the
screen according to the mood of the aria. A sense of slow
pace which would have otherwise resulted from the one-minute
tonal drag of the ending sound of the first line is now
overcome by vivid showing of conventional theatrical
gestures. Such a method fits the Chinese poetic concept of
qingjing jiaorong - the fusion of feeling and
scenery. The second
characteristic is the use of montage or special effects to
"realise" the non-realism or symbolism of the traditional
form. This method can be commonly observed in well-known
opera films. In the 1954 Shaoxing opera film Liang Shanbo
and Zhu Yingtai, special filmic techniques realise the
romantic ending of the tragedy when the Chinese Romeo and
Juliet turn into a pair of beautiful butterflies flying
freely from the erupted tomb - an image which the
traditional stage is unable to represent. In the 1955
huangmei opera film The heavenly match, the
personified Chinese scholartree is made alive as a
matchmaker for the seventh daughter of the celestial emperor
and an honest poor peasant, preserving the original legend
while strengthening the surreal effect. Further examples can
be seen in the 1980s Beijing opera film The white
snake, in which the white-snake lady and her green-snake
maid fly through the clouds between lofty mountains and land
on the earth, where the lady charms a young man through her
magic skills. Surreal effects such as these, true to the
imagination of storytellers and performers in history, are
now represented by the magic of cinematic modes. The third
characteristic is the modification of some Beijing opera
conventions to make the performance appear more life-like.
Most settings are made realistic by cinematic presentation
of real scenery. In a significant number of cinematic
versions, characters do not wear the long artificial beard.
Instead, characters such as the Qianlong Emperor and Cao
Xueqin wear a moustache which resembles their respective
personal pictures. The painted face is not visually employed
if the hualian singing style remains. The recitation
of the laosheng, laodan and qingyi
roles is done in Mandarin without the Zhongzhou and
Huguang pronunciation. The shrieking falsetto of the
xiaosheng singing style is not heard from young male
characters though all the other singing styles are still
preserved and represented. Yet whenever possible, these
conventions so far modified, reduced or eliminated are still
represented in a play within the play. For example, in
The story of Pan Yueqiao (Pan Yueqiao chuanqi,
a Beijing opera 1990) there is a scene showing the audience
watching Pan Yueqiao perform in the traditional opera
Wronged ghosts in the opium den. On the stage within
that scene everything is done according to the traditional
mode. The audience sees the conventional gestures with the
artificial beard and long hair. This scene demonstrates
another beneficial use of the cinematography. The first line
of the aria is in the erhuang daoban tune and is
traditionally sung at the back of the stage. Instead of
focusing statically on the empty stage, the camera moves in
a series of close-ups to show the details of the theatre
environment such as stage design, the musical instruments,
the audience, and stage conventions. Such a method uses
historical realism to highlight traditional theatrical
conventions. The fourth
characteristic relates to aspects of music and singing. In
some of the filmed versions, the traditional formulaic
opening bars and interludes in the accompanying music are
minimised to speed the pace, while keeping the singing in
harmony with the mood of the lyrics. In addition to the
traditional Chinese musical instruments, an electronic
synthesiser is used to make the Beijing opera music more
melodious in some cases and more rhythmic in others, in
accordance with the content of the lyrics. An example can be
seen from Pan Yueqiao's singing to persuade the governor of
Shanghai to cooperate with Dr. Sun Yat-sen's revolution.
Another example is the Qianlong Emperor's singing on the
boat when he tries to outwit the boatman, an assassin in
The Qianlong Emperor's travel to the Jiangnan area
(Qianlong xia Jiangnan, a Beijing opera 1989). In
these operas, the background music is composed with Beijing
opera melody. Furthermore, unlike stage performances, a
common device in most television series of traditional
operas is the recurrence of a piece of music or a song to
form a motif linking different cinematic images. For
instance, in The story of Pan Yueqiao each part ends
with a song sung twice by the off-screen voice of Pan
Yueqiao. The lyric goes as follows: This song has a
double meaning in its reference to Pan Yueqiao as an actor
and in its philosophical summary of the play itself. The
melody could make this song a popular aria to be sung by
amateurs. What might
disappoint the fans of the traditional conventions is that
most recent cinematic versions of traditional theatre do
away with pantomimic gestures such as the symbolic opening
and closing of doors. Stylised movements are preserved
mainly in those scenes which involve singing and acrobatics
such as the traditional boat-rowing scene. Different types
of filmed versions vary: some have more stylised movements
and gestures than others; some still have traces of a stage
form on the screen while others are more akin to a film or
television drama format with realistic settings. With the
authenticity of various regional operatic singing and yet
deviated from its stage conventions, most contemporary
cinematic versions of traditional theatre transmit the
knowledge and art of an old tradition through an innovative,
popular and entertaining form. The significance
of the recent marriage between traditional theatre and
television further lies in four areas. First, it is likely
to make Western-influenced television culture more Chinese
and help the old Chinese theatre become modernised.
Secondly, these popular cinematic operas have attracted some
of the young members of the television audience who could
not understand the traditional form and seldom went to see
stage productions: when they have cultivated a stable taste
for traditional operas, they may go to the theatre to see
the classical form. Thirdly, the cinematic operas can widen
the range of the traditional topics and produce more
playwrights who are willing to explore new fields: under
their authorship, more theatrical pieces have come and will
continue to come to the television screen. Fourthly, the
shift to television has encouraged the inclusion of
different regional styles of the traditional theatre in the
writing of scripts for serial plays, the production of stage
serial plays and the making of television series. For
instance, Sister Empresses (Jiemei huanghou)
is a script of a serial play in three parts. From its
publication in the late 1980s to the end of 1990, it was
adapted into thirty-two regional styles and staged by around
400 theatrical troupes in cities and the countryside. It was
telecast through various TV stations in the styles of
huaguxi (Anhui TV Station), huangmeixi (Hubei
TV Station), jinju (Shanxi TV Station) and
xiangju (Xiamen TV Station).[38]
Although the case of Sister Empresses seems
exceptional, the trend of adapting successful stage
productions onto television is still developing, and its
significance is growing. [38]
An Zi, "Tiren zuowei ganxing de meixue yuanze" ("Knowledge
through experience: aesthetic principles of perception")
Anhui xinxi (Anhui new plays), 1 (1991):
71. To summarise what
has been discussed and analysed in the above four areas, we
may conclude that the presence of traditional theatre in
Chinese cinema throughout history is manifested in the
production of a large number of opera films, in the
treatment of theatre and its performers as a constant
subject matter in fictional films, and in the use of
operatic music, well-known arias, and striking theatrical
images as motifs in developing stories of non-theatrical
films. Throughout this long process of the interaction
between theatre and film, theatre was an inspiration for the
making of films at different technological stages; it served
as a cultural base as well as a force to advance an
independent domestic film industry in competition with
foreign films; and it still remains as national symbol or an
authentic Chinese entity in its power to mould people's
outlook, to engage people in social discourses, and to
generate a distinctly local symbolism. While traditional
theatre has greatly influenced the film/television medium in
China, the cinematic modes have in turn played a significant
role in effecting innovations within traditional theatrical
forms. These innovative changes include the construction of
realistic stage settings, the modification of stylised
conventions, the use of a variety of camera shots to achieve
special effects in opera films or the use of lighting to
focus on part of the stage to achieve the effect of close-up
shots, and the employment of montage technique to quicken
the pace of performance. Cinematic modes are much needed now
to revitalise an old theatre for a large audience of the
younger generation.
11, 353 words
Abstract
| Printer
version
1. Cinematic
representations of traditional theatre
2. Theatre and
its performers as subject matter for fictional
films
I
am a humble nun just at the age of sixteen,
Right in the springtime of life:
Already the abbess has shaved my hair.
I was originally a pretty maiden,
Not a youthful man.
Since
I accompanied the king in his battles here and
there,
I have endured tempered weather and physical fatigue
year after year.
I hate that ruler of the Qin dynasty who ruined human
lives,
Making ordinary people suffer one hardship after
another.
The
king's spirit has been exhausted;
How can I, the humble concubine, continue my life?
See
how deepest purple, brightest scarlet -
All is there for the broken well and collapsed
walls.
What's the use of all this beautiful scene and
wonderful time?
And where is the garden with joyous cries?
I
hear soldiers ventilate their opinions,
Expressing intentions of quitting the army.
Listen
to my granny talking about the revolution -
Heroic, tragic and solemn.
Now I know I was raised up in the wind
And grew up in the storm...
3. Use of
theatrical music and songs as narrative or musical motifs in
non-theatrical films
4. Influences of
cinematic modes upon traditional theatre
People
say that the actor is a madman
And the audience is crazy.
Don't you know that the madman is not mad
And the crazy one is not crazy.
On the theatrical carpet are enacted
Strange things from antiquity to the present;
Accompanied by the strings and drums
Excellent songs are sung about happiness, anger,
sadness and fear.
Wisdom is hidden in absurdity;
Reality resides in the depth of illusion.
A play ends with its meaning inexhaustible,
Relying on the audience to comment on its merits and
defects.
